“Awwwww!!!”
Good idea, wrong innovator. Bonus if you can use a member of the new recruits not normally given a starring role. Details please.
(#00277)
{trickle trickle trickle trickle DOONK}
Jamie leaned back in appreciation. He made it work! He made something work! And it was beautiful.
“What the hell, Squirt?”
“It’s an office meditation toy,” he announced. Sure, this one was made out of whatever he could scrounge, but the finished product… was going to be awesome.
The pipe set just so under the recirculating water tipped with a {DOONK} noise.
“That sorta thing’s for gardens, Squirt. You’d never get anyone to set that thing up in their office. Too distracting. Too annoying. Too big.”
“Aawwwwww…”
*
Three weeks later, someone else had a similar idea on the shelves. Albeit, briefly on the shelves before an eager customer nabbed it and paid twice what Jamie had imagined he could sell it for.
Jamie stared in red-faced fury at the display poster and wished he could get away with kicking Mister Logan.
“Hey, Squirt, we’re headin’…” Logan stopped. He, too, had connected the dots.
Jamie, meanwhile, was fighting back tears.
“Too big, you said,” he managed. “Too annoying.” Sniff. “I coulda made a whole bunch'a money…”
Logan was shaking his head and whispering unprintable things about stupid people. “Tell ya what, kid. Next time you have a dumb idea, I’ll back it.”
“He-ey…”
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Challenge #00276: Peck of Dust, Dust, Dust…
Dust.
People tend to think about the big things, when it comes to the perils of space travel. Meteors. Solar flares. Stresses on the air tanks. Sparks in unwanted places.
Few ever ponder that a crew might encounter trouble with their own epithelial cloud.
Five year missions were the maximum, after the trouble had been discovered, of course. People who got dandruff either had to shave (carefully!), vacuum, or pass on the idea of going into space in the first place.
Filters could only do so much, and by the end of that five-year cruise, the entire crew were wearing filter masks to escape the choking miasma.
Kale was on Dust Duty, pretty much permanently. The reward for a job well done was not promotion, in her case. Her reward for a job well done was to keep doing it unto perpetuity.
Or so she thought.
This scavenger crew came back with smiles, a distinct absence of coughs, and a definitive lack of filters stuck to their faces.
No rheumy eyes. No puffy faces. Even Dan Dander had let his hair grow.
“What the shit?” Kale complained. “Did you guys just sit around and fart for five years?”
“Nope,” smiled the captain. “We found us some bau-bubbles.”
“Baubles?”
“No, bau-bubbles.”
“Bubbles?”
“I’ll say it slowly. Bau-bubbles. Little, living bubble-bauble-squid lookin’ things. Some old archive on board called ‘em Fhitts. Onomatopoea,” he shrugged. “I like bau-bubbles better. It’s classier.”
“It won’t catch on,” Kale took a shot at his enthusiasm. “The lizards go with first identification and don’t listen to us.” She stared at one as it drifted through the air on jets of its own making.
It was iridescent, like a soap bubble, but without the swirling caused by the motion of liquid. Making it look almost like a Christmas bauble had escaped its mother tree.
Then Kale saw the tentacles.
“They EAT dust!” Dan Dander whooped. “Aren’t they just beautiful?”
On the upside, once these were in every ship, they didn’t need to worry about dust any more. And she could do anything else other than Dust Duty.
Things were starting to look up.
*
They bred like freaking cockroaches. They sometimes ate the freaking cockroaches, too, which was a minor plus point, but they were everywhere.
Pro: There was no such thing as Dust Duty andy more. Con: There was now Fhitt Scraping Detail.
Little bastards got into the filters and died there.
It was almost a relief, two years later, when a different scavenger crew came in with the Fhitt-eating spiders.
Almost.
Kale had a hard time making up her mind which was worse: hairy, ten-legged spiders in the face, Fhitt Scraping Detail, or Dust Duty.
There had to be a better way.
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Challenge #00275: On the Folly of Tailored Worlds
When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s a bore. Eh?
Worlds can not be built. That sort of thing takes millions of years, and no known cogniscents are willing to wait that long.
They can, however, be tailored.
The most famous group for doing this are the Archivaas. A human-descended cult of collecting, collating, storing and sorting records and information of all kinds. As a preventative measure against data loss, post Shattering, much akin to guarding the vault after a theft.
These obsessive-compulsive hoarders turn entire planetary systems into libraries.
But they are not the silliest example of planet-tailoring.
That award goes to Polyxicon IV, a planet owned by one of the wealthiest heirs of North Quarter Greater Deregulation. Once the planet’s surface had been groomed to his expectations, he was quite upset that the planet did not have a romantic moon.
The solution, since he also despised ocean noise, was to install a faux moon that orbited on demand at a satisfactory level above most buildings. It was made of a Control Operated Levitation unit with a rudimentary AI and coated in thick layers of sponge.
This turned out to be an advantageous construction choice.
The moon’s AI got bored, after a few human generations, and began deliberately bumping in to romance-inclined couples for its own entertainment.
For serial monogamists, this soon became a factor of irritation.
And the rebirth -and re-wording- of an old Terran song.
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Mundane Utility: The Sequel
Expanding on the previous challenge, why not show how some other mutants with fantastic superhuman powers use their incredible abilities for decidedly non-incredible things? Pick at least two. Oh, but not obvious/overdone stuff like Jean using her TK as an extra hand - be creative. – Josh
(#00273)
“This is my popcorn,” Lance protested. “You want some, go make your own.”
“But I’m hungry now,” protested Freddy.
Todd used his prehensile tongue to snag a lions’ share in one, large {da-gloomp}. “Yo, how ‘bout you make popcorn for alla’ us?”
“Gyah. Dammit!” Lance shoved the remainder at Fred and stomped back towards the kitchen.
*
Kitty looked both ways before pushing her fingers inside her locker padlock. She had never received a combination or, if she had, she’d quickly lost it or forgotten it and hadn’t really been bothered. Besides, this was good practice for focused phasing and unphasing.
{klik-tik, ta-snak!} the litte combination lock sprung open and Kitty could get to her textbooks.
*
“Tell me, Ms Adrien,” said the very severe-looking FBI agent across the table from her. “How is it that you can 'feel the difference’ in counterfeit bills with one hundred percent accuracy when it takes our criminal forensics labs weeks to identify them?”
Sara, still in her Cleanup Fairy uniform (her client had been too cheap to pay her to remove the wings) and half her hazmat gear, grinned nervously. “It’s a long and complicated story, really.”
“Precis it for us.”
“Uh. How do you feel about mutants?”
“They’re just like everyone else, in the end. Which means an equal likelihood of being heroes or villains. Which are you?”
“Chaotic good?” Sara’ optimistic smile faded the longer she stared at the agent’s disapproving face. “Watch carefully.” A deep breath. Forced relaxation. And her pink skin turned into a dazzling array of aqua scales.
“You’re green!”
“I prefer to think of myself as a little bit blue-ish.” She held a single finger forward. The scales were much smaller on the palm side of her hand. If you could imagine a mosaic made of millions of pinheads, all coloured unique shades of aqua, you might come close to the overall effect. “They’re not scales, but chromatophores. I can take on the colour and texture of anything in my immediate environment to effectively disappear. But, in order to do so, each chromatophore also contains a rudimentary eye, and some other senses.”
The FBI agent boggled at her.
“I can 'see’ more details with my hands than my eyes. So I naturally notice when something is 'off’ with the money I handle. If there’s a file on me–”
“You better believe there’s a file on you.”
“Good. Then you’ll note that my first enquiry contained separated samples, including genuine cash from the US mint.”
She went to the copious folder at her elbow. Double-checking. Telling that that entry was two-thirds of the way through.
“See, I’m new to this skin. Shedding is horrid, let me assure you of that. So I couldn’t be certain which ones were which. Once you sent the normal money back, I could -pardon the pun- get my hand in.”
Flip. Flip flip flip. Flip. “And,” flip flip, “thereafter you only sent us the 'funny money’”
“Catalogued by source,” added Sara. “I thought it might be helpful.”
The FBI agent got up, taking the file, and left.
Sara wriggled free of the cuffs so she could scratch an itch, then wriggled back into them again. There was quite the extensive argument going on, behind the mirror. Those rooms were not nearly as sound-proof as they thought.
The temptation was so very strong to write a message on the mirror -backwards, so they could read it- to keep the noise down.
Sara pulled her ankles up and entered the Lotus Pose(adapted, of course, to accomodate the cuffs). Calm. Regulate breathing. Let all come to the centre, and the centre will hold.
“How are you doing that?”
“I told you,” said Sara without looking, “chromatophores. I blend in with the scenery. There’s also a sub-telepathic 'ignore me’ field going on, but that usually happens when I’m stressed.” She opened her eyes. “I take it that there’s some debate with regards to hiring me as a consultant.”
“What? Are you a telepath, too?”
“No, I just do an eerie impersonation of one. You’re a very loud debater, Agent Brooks.” Sara made her skin relax back to its natural state. “And, to my credit, I never once perpetuated a crime portrayed in any of my films or animations.”
“We also have your 'perfect murder’ files.”
“Well… I was working on a game… Didn’t pan out. I guess I’ll have to save those for mystery writing.”
“There’s one in there to kill the President!”
“And notable other public figures. So far, the only one worth any of the bother is Tony Abbot. And I can’t afford the air fare.”
“Who the hell is Tony Abbot?”
“Too soon,” said Sara. She cleared her throat. “Look. Have I actually committed any crime?”
“None that we can prove. Or prosecute.”
“And nothing decodable in my journals is any real threat?”
“It’s the encoded stuff that bothers us.”
“Now you share the joy at reading redacted documents. Welcome to Karma.” Another itch bothered her and she did the cuff trick again, without thinking. “If consultant is too high up the ladder, perhaps informant might make you feel more comfortable? Is there anything lower than informant?”
“Yeah. Perp.”
“Then informant will have to do. Parade me through the security check of your choice. I’m willing to co-operate.”
Brooks was staring at her wrists. “So I see.’
Ooops. "Sorry. They itch. Isn’t the fact that I put them back on proof that I’m an amenable person?”
“No, it proves you’re willing to mess with our heads.”
“What must I do to prove to you I’m not a mutant terrorist threat?”
“Decode your journals.”
“Hm. Surrender all privacy.” Sara thought hard about it. The FBI liked having all the information, but did not like sharing. “There’s some coded information in some journals that should never be used by anyone alive today. It’s just that dangerous.”
“How dangerous?”
“A power source that could, in the wrong hands, blow the planet in half.”
“And you thought that up.”
“And encoded it so it would take several someones a few thousand years to decode it. Even using the monkey-typewriter model.” A shrug. “I get ideas like some folks get dandruff. The only way to make them stop is to write them down. Even when they’re capital-D dangerous.”
She left again. Another argument ensued behind the window.
This was getting tiresome.
“Fine,” said Brooks on her return. She handed over a piece of paper. “You turn up at this address every Tuesday morning at eight sharp. You do not talk to anyone not wearing FBI ID. You stay inside, under guard, and you do not pull that blending-into-the-walls bullshit. And you definitely do not escape any more cuffs, no matter how itchy you are. Any questions?”
“Is there a dress code?”
“Since it’s you, I’d say 'neon’.”
“You have some very nice paper. A grade or three up from common A4. Who’s your supplier?”
There was no answer from Brooks. Just two burly guards to escort her roughly into the black van that had picked her up from her job.
“Do I get my phone back? I have to rearrange my calendar!”
The following Tuesday, she turned up in neon rainbows. Brooks had to get very specific with the dress code, after that.
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Challenge #00272: So sharp…
Realising that Wolverine rarely, if ever, actually washes his claws
or
Wolverine getting a hand cleaning the claws, because it’s fiddly when both sets are out and he can’t put them away until all the bits of zombie/dirt/stuff are gone
[AN: Since it’s my birthday, today, you get both.]
“Whaddaya mean, don’t ‘perform field surgery’?”
“What is up with you?” demanded Scott.
Sara looked around at their stunned faces. “None of you noticed?”
“Noticed what?” asked Kitty.
“Logan’s claws can cut anything, but they’ve never gone through soap and water?” Sara prompted.
More blank stares.
“He never washes them!”
One by one, the collective pennies dropped. All stared in horror at a man cutting steak with knives he put away inside his body.
“What? said Logan. ”I never got sick.“
====
The instant the fighting was down to an easily-mopped-up few, Sara started running towards Logan. He was in the thick of the fight, or the thick of what was left of the fight. Enjoying himself.
"Logan!”
“Yeh?”
“It’s vitally important that you do NOT retract your claws after you down the last one.”
“Yeh?”
“Yes. Blood-borne pathogens. They’ll get into you via your claws and the cuts they make.”
The look of horror as he smashed the last one’s brains was almost poetic.
His adamantium talons were coated in assorted ichors from tip to root.
“That’s why you passed out these helmets.”
“Spatter plus orifii equals infection,” said Sara. She got on her team comm. “Kurt? I need you to bamf back to the X-jet and fetch the big blue bag with Zombie Preparedness on it.”
“The TARDIS bag?”
“That’s the one.”
“Seriously?” interjected Kitty. “You prepared for zombies?”
“Where do you think all the helmets and machetes came from?”
“Like, I do not know if you’re crazy-prepared or just plain crazy…”
“Well, I could have just thought of myself and made it a much smaller bag,” said Sara.
“Shuttingup.”
“OOF!” Teutonic cursing came through the comms. “What do you have in here? A portable forensics lab?”
“Amongst other things, yes.”
“Unglaublich…” Static as he teleported. From the sound of things, it was a series of shorter hops than his initial trip to the Blackbird. When he arrived, he was out of breath and perspiring.
Sara immediately dug out the ration bars. “Here. Max calories in minimum packaging.”
Kurt almost inhaled three before he noticed that the taste was not that great. “Gott! These are those awful fruity oat bars you got me to test…”
“You’re welcome,” snarked Sara. She cleared a level space and set up the lab. Took several swabs of ichor from Logan’s claws. Inserted them in test tubes with fluid from numbered bottles.
Kurt had been going through the rest of it. “Since when do you need laminated instructions?”
“In case I get infected, dear. So someone else knows how to use it.” She absent-mindedly set up a small macroscope and began flicking tube contents under the analyzer whilst staring at the screen. “Mmm. Lysol. Clorox… And good old Dettol.”
A wicked grin spread across Sara’s face.
“Tallwater…” warned Logan.
“Wire brush and Dettol!” Sara cackled in Billy Connolly’s voice. A notepad and paper. “Right. Kurt, dear? Here’s your looting list. Try to be quick and careful?”
“Ja.” {BAMF!}
Sara, meanwhile, emptied half the contents of three bottles into a bowl and swished them around with what turned out to be a vacuum-packed sponge. “Let’s do what we can…”
There were no wire brushes, so the team had to resort to steel wool and chemical-soaked paper towels. Two worked on each hand - carefully, of course - to ensure that every last nanometer of adamantium talon was spotless.
Logan grimaced and winced at the steel wool.
“It shouldn’t hurt,” noted Sara.
“No,” squeaked Logan. “It tickles.”
“And done,” said Jean.
Sara took out a very small flamethrower. “Not quite.”
They also burned the sponges and steel wool.
“I didn’t know you could burn metal,” said Kurt.
“With enough heat, you can burn anything,” said Sara. She waved vaguely at the sun. “QED.”
Logan was staring at his claws like a man seeing them for the first time. They were no longer cherry-red from the heat, but they were still too hot to retract properly. “You win,” he said. “You figure out a way for me to wash 'em, and I’ll wash 'em. Regularly.”
“You do care!” Sara chirped. “All we really need to do is install lever-controls on all the taps. That way, you can operate them with your elbow.”
“You like, totally think of everything.”
“Thank you,” said Sara.
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Challenge #00271: Rule 9 for Life
The mundane uses of adamantium claws
[AN: For those unfamiliar with Gibbs and his rules, rule 9 is “Never go anywhere without a knife”]
There is a saying that goes, ‘for a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’. For Logan, he always had a knife.
He used them to snag apples from the fruit bowl. To open tricky parcels. To open mail. To shave with. To deal with that horrible shrink wrap that industries put on everything.
And, much to Sara’s disgust, to cut his steaks.
“Something wrong with meat, Tallwater?”
“Something wrong with a clean steak knife?” she countered.
“Don’t need 'em,” smirked Logan. “These are better.”
Sara shuddered. “Do me a favour and never perform field surgery with them?”
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Challenge #00270: Heroic
Bigger brother usually has the spotlight, he’s always the one they call when there’s trouble, and he’s good at what he does. But sometimes, the younger sibling saves the day.
He called himself Pax, an ancient word for peace. Of course, the first time he was noticed as a hero, the headline read, PAX A PUNCH! in typical headliner absence of humor.
He was tall, strong, could fly, very little could harm him and, when he sang, he had an orpheatic influence on everyone around him. He once stopped a riot with a megaphone by singing “Goodnight” by the Beatles.
There was a very obvious reason they didn’t have Karaoke Night any more. Not since he got his powers.
Lila had been his first fan. He could do everything she was just learning to do with such ease. Five years his junior, she knew without a doubt that just about everything Ben got, she would eventually get, too.
Hand-me-downs were a state of being until he got the hero gig.
Lila had been happy to be the ‘detective’ side of things, analyzing, researching, and in some cases, hacking out the truth from the internet of lies. Part of her believed that it was only a matter of time before the hero gene hit her hard.
So she helped out, out of habit. And waited, out of optimism. And hoped, out of insanity.
For five years.
Six.
Eight.
Lila gave up. Mentally relegated herself to the role of sidekick and took time off when Ben/Pax was beating up some big fugly super villain after, of course, luring them away from the city centre so collateral damage was minimized.
Some supers could be so inconsiderate about that.
But it wasn’t a super who blew up a building down the street from her favourite coffee shop. It was just regular, run-of-the-mill white male asshole terrorists who wanted to skew the balance 'properly’ back into their favour.
She knew because they hacked the nearest telebillboard to spread their message of hate and intolerance.
Prioritize.
First, call emergency services. Her fingers had practically done that on automatic. Ben regularly got her to call in lesser emergencies while he was on his way to bigger disasters on the theory that every little bit helped.
“What has your friend seen now?” said the operator. Shanice.
“No, I’m on site for this one. Bunch of assholes calling themselves the Brotherhood for Equality just blew a fuck-off sized hole in the Principality building. You could run a trace on…” she squinted. “Telebillboard rego number #T349Y84209435H. That aughta help catch the bastards.”
“Ma'am, I have you on the corner of fifth and twenty-second. That’s five blocks from from Principality and seven from that billboard. You’d have to be on it to read it.”
“Uh. The zoom function on my tablet’s pretty awesome,” Lila invented. “I can see smoke coming out of Principality. You’re going to have to send fire teams.”
It was a real pity that folks like Time Twister had gone private, keeping wealthy people young and healthy. Someone like that could have easily just run the explosion, deaths and destruction backwards and then defused the bomb.
Everyone chose their own path.
Lila put her phone in her pocket and started running towards the wreckage. She concentrated on moving the wounded to a clear, safe area before looking for survivors inside the building.
Tunnels she made in the smoke told her that she was going faster than she thought she was, so she took extra care at acceleration and deceleration. Didn’t want to kill anyone while trying to save them.
Onwards.
If she moved fast, she could clear tunnels in the smoke and debris. Explore which passageways lead to safety and highlight them for those able to rescue themselves.
Flame could be put out by jogging past it. Her own wind-wake just blew them out.
Ha. She was officially a fast woman. Haha.
She was not as strong as her brother, but speed could be used in multiple ways to solve the same problem. Girder trapping someone? Use one of her hairs to saw it into manageable pieces. Heavy rubble? Tap it into gravel.
When it was over, when everyone was out, that’s when Lila noticed the caveats.
He clothes had burned away from her body - a problem solved by one of the arriving EMT’s with a space blanket - and she was starving-hungry - a problem at least partially solved by the street-vendors-turned-volunteer-helpers.
She rescued her phone and got back inside the space blanket before it had a chance to fall. Heat had melted some of its exterior, but it was still functional enough to make a very important call.
“I’m a little busy…”
“Yeah, I know. Guess who probably set a new land speed record? Aaaaaannnd needs a full change of clothes ASAP…”
Silence. Well. Relative silence. She could hear the villain of the week monologuing in the background.
“Ben?”
“Gimmie a sec, I’ll be right there.” BOOM! “Gotta get 'em when they’re monologuing, remember that.”
“Right,” smiled Lila. “Oh. And it looks like I don’t need my glasses any more.” She peeled a fragment of what had once been a frame off her face. Damn. Friction did a lot of bad things.
“And you just paid for your next years’ subscription, too.”
And then the media swooped. They just got word that she was the hero of the day.
“How long have you been a Super?”
“Uh,” Lila checked the time. “Fifteen minutes?”
“What are you going to call yourself?”
Her smart mouth and otherwise sharp wit got her named, The Streak, that day. Much to her eternal regret.
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Challenge #00267: Learning the Ropes
“We also also learned that anyone ordering in excess of three tons of tapioca, six conifers, and a goldfish should be arrested immediately, and please, please, please do not ask why.”
Every last Ensign asked, “Why?”
This one asked, “What can you possibly do with tapioca, conifers, and a goldfish?”
Lyr turned on hir. “Have you heard of an area called the Glunk?”
“Uh. No?”
“I’ll send you the map co-ordinates,” she reached into the cache-spot she’d prepared without knowing why, that morning. It had a heavy-duty filter breath-mask and an all-purpose polyvinyl bodysuit. “You’ll need these.”
The Ensign took them with increasing trepidation.
“And yes, before you ask, we were able to rescue the goldfish.”
“Did you use your pre-cog abilities?”
“No. Everyone asks about the goldfish. Oh, and don’t disturb the Cleaners in there. They’re very territorial.”
Ze was going to look, if only to satisfy hir own curiosity. Lyr didn’t need to forsee it. Sooner or later, everyone who heard about the Glunk went to look.
It was, after all, one of the few areas of the station that had it’s own, understandably isolated, ecology. And if things went well, it might even be habitable in another eighty years.
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Challenge #00260: Bubbles in History
Since you like Adventure Time (and I hope you’ve seen some of the more recent episodes, minor spoilers in prompt)
Bubblegum: Journey from Irradiated Pink Ooze to the founder of a Kingdom.
[AN: Warning - Rampant headcannon ahead]
See…
A wrecked city. It used to be called Cincinnati, before the bombs fell. The survivors braved its depths for supplies. Useful things. Food. Metals.
Feel…
It hurt to be alive. She was alive. She couldn’t leave. She was quite literally stuck here.
Fragmented memories of before the bomb. Candy store. An argument with someone. Someone special. Science. She had science to do…
Move…
She could move. She could see… but her body.
Her body wasn’t human any more.
She… had become…
Gum.
Pink, gooey, bubblegum.
But she could move. Spread. Shrink. Let things go. Coalesce. It took her days, but the world had just ended. It wasn’t as if anyone wanted gum.
*
He was here! The someone.
Simon!
She had no voice, but she could hear. He had a sick child. He needed chicken soup.
She spread tendrils of herself into the places that the survivors couldn’t go. Or wouldn’t go, because of the mutated goo-monsters still here.
Found…
One can of soup. One can-opener.
Found…
Him in the alley. Defeating the evil crown through an effort of will.
Offered the prize to him. Managed a face. A smile.
“Euw…”
Right. She was gooey stretches of bubblegum. Nobody found that nice. She retreated. Left him alone.
He still had the crown.
She didn’t remember much, but as long as he had the crown, he could hurt her. He had hurt her.
She would have to devise a more efficient manner of communicating.
*
Simon’s storm had changed something. The goo and the cold and the high-fructose corn syrup and who knew what else had come together in a perfect storm.
Life sprang anew in the wreckage of Cincinnati.
Candy life.
She worked hard on making a body. A body she half-remembered from Before. There was too much ‘hair’, but she had a solution.
Cut it. Roll it into the new sugar compounds. Store it. Just in case.
They could hatch. They could become cogniscent clones of herself. She just didn’t know.
*
Candy life could be shaped. Could be trained. They called her a Princess. One even found an amulet in the old ruins under her realm. It had interesting properties, which she had to study in secret.
Candy was an interesting building material. Fruitcake walls were going to protect her sweet life forms. Her children.
Simon and I wanted to have children…
No. She wasn’t that half-remembered woman, any more. Things had changed. The whole world had changed.
Cats and dogs both were walking upright and talking. They were building societies of their own.
Humans were anarchic gangs. Some had gone underground. Literally. Some were spawning new species.
Goblins and Orcs and Trolls. Giants and Minotaurs.
Practically the entire D&D compendium.
The mutagen had to be to blame. It was literally running through the entirety of the land. She had to do something to stop it. Contain it. Perhaps, stabilize the population.
And all she had to hand was candy.
“Princess! Princess!”
They were summoning her. Someone was in trouble. Someone outside the fruitcake walls.
*
The amulet was gone. She had to rely on other means to create things. At least the gumball guardians were doing their job.
Candy lasted.
The power of the mutagen turned everything in a limited area into candy, but at least it wasn’t toxic to other life.
There was a large area of cold, relatively close to her candy kingdom. She thought she knew what it was, but she was just too busy.
Other kingdoms demanded her time. Demanded her attention. Demanded negotiations.
She was just so busy.
She needed a hero. And candy folk weren’t so naturally inclined.
If the dogs weren’t so busy with that war in the crystal dimension…
If the cats weren’t mostly evil…
If ifs and ands were pots and pans… She rolled her eyes. First, forge peace. Then, get on with her discoveries.
If she could figure out the new rules to this messed-up world, then she could work to fix it.
*
He’d found her again. Just when she’d got comfortable.
He’d changed. He didn’t remember anything of Before and she wasn’t about to tell him, either.
She’d let herself get soft.
And all she could do was scream.
Wait. There in the snow. A boy and his dog. Or a dog and his boy. They were the only ones close to hand. The only ones within earshot.
They were her only hope.
*
They were brothers. Finn and Jake. They lived in a treehouse not far from her kingdom. Finn may well be the last true-human on Ooo.
She wanted to study him. Scientifically.
Analyse whether or not the human race deserved a second chance. Or let him live as a hero and let the humans who once ruined this world go out in a blaze of glory.
Time would tell.
And for a very young boy, Finn was kind of cute.
Stop.
She was far too old for him.
…far too old…
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“Well, Sweetie…”
“Mommy, how did you meet Daddy?”
(#00259)
He blushed. “Uh…” He glanced over at Edi. Edi nodded.
“Well… I was naked at the time…”
“Da-a-a-ad….”
“No, he’s telling the truth. Daddy wasn’t wearing so much as one red stitch.”
“There was the band-aid. That was technically cloth.”
“It was on your left shoulder. It doesn’t count as clothes.”
Tril rolled her eyes. She’d been hearing these kinds of arguments since before she could talk. “Mo-om…”
“Do I have to explain why I was naked?”
“One word. College.”
“Right. So I was running for my life and risking charges of indecent exposure. You can’t run fast when you’re hiding your junk. Trust me on this one.”
“Euw,” said Til.
“And he barreled straight into me. Knocked me over,” said Edi. “And this was in the middle of a cold snap, so I was the opposite. Two layers of pants, four layers of tops, a cloak.”
Til grinned. She loved that cloak.
“Me, buck naked on top of her. Pretty much a compromising position,” he laughed at the image, “And then I said:”
“Sorry about that. Hey. If I survive, can I buy you a coffee? I promise I’ll have clothes on.” Edi chorussed with him.
“An encounter like that, you remember,” said Edi. “It was morbid fascination at first sight.”
“Still working for me,” he chirped.
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